Email Marketing Glossary
| Word | Description |
Call to Action |
The body copy and button that directs the email recipient what action to take to complete an offer. |
Campaign |
A designed and planned series of e-mail marketing messages to a list of recipients delivered according to a time schedule, with a conversion goal in mind. |
CAN-SPAM |
2003 Law – Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act – that bans false headers and misleading subject lines, and states that emails must include an opt-out link and the physical postal address of the sender. |
Catch-All |
An email server function that forwards all suspected spam to a single mailbox. |
CAUCE |
An anti-spam advocacy group |
Click-Through |
The act a recipient takes by clicking on a linked call to action button in an email message. |
Click-Through Rate |
The total number of clicks on a link in an email message divided by the total number of emails sent. |
CMS |
System for the creation, modification, archiving, and removal of information resources from an organized repository. Includes tools for publishing, format management, revision control, indexing, search, and retrieval. |
Confirmed Opt-In |
Double opt-in subscription process. Subscribers are sent an email after signing up for the email list, and they must confirm that they want to subscribe to the list by validating their email addresses. |
Content Syndication |
Either offering your own content for use on other sites in exchange for a plug or link or using content from other sites with permission. This is a good strategy and effective quid pro quo for both parties. One receives free publicity and the other receives unique and quality articles for keyword optimization without having to write each proprietarily. |
Conversion |
The act an email recipient makes by completing the desired action of an email message – such as purchasing a product, downloading a white paper, registering for a webinar, etc. |
Conversion Rate |
The total number of email conversions divided by the total number of emails sent. |
CRM |
Methodologies, software, and Internet capabilities that help an enterprise manage customer relationships in an organized way. |
Cross-Campaign Profiling |
Tracking customer behavior across multiple email campaigns. |
CSV |
Specific format in which each new field is separated by a comma, such as first name, last name, title, company, email address, phone number. |
Dedicated IP Address |
IP Address used by only one sender. To help maintain a good reputation, email marketers should send all of their emails from a dedicated IP Address. |
Delivered Email |
The number of emails sent minus the number of bounced and filtered emails. |
Delivery Tracking |
The measurement of how many emails were delivered and how many were undelivered due to hard or soft bounce. |
Deploy |
The act of sending an email campaign to a list. |
DNS |
A database of Internet names and addresses which translates the names to the official IP numbers and vice versa. |
Domain |
The website address of a company consisting of www (world wide web), the identification of the company (such as name), and category of the site (such as .com, .edu, .biz) |
DomainKeys |
A proposed anti-spam system designed by Yahoo! for verifying the DNS domain of an email sender and the message integrity. |
Double Opt-In |
Confirmed opt-in subscription process. Subscribers are sent an email after signing up for the email list, and they must confirm that they want to subscribe to the list by validating their email addresses. |
Dynamic Content |
Email content that changes per recipient according to a set of predetermined rules based on each recipient’s history or preferences. |
| ECPA | The Electronic Communications Privacy Act, was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1986. Specifically, ECPA was an amendment to Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (the Wire Tap Statute). The Wire Tap Statute was primarily designed to prevent unauthorized government access to private communications. ECPA extended the Wire Tap Statute to include transmissions of electronic data by computer. |
Email Appending |
A service that matches email addresses to postal addresses. |
Email Domain |
The portion of the domain to the right of the @ symbol. |
Email Prefix |
The portion of the domain to the left of the @ symbol. |
Email Harvesting |
Automated process of using spiders to extract email addresses from web pages, either from search starting from single page or based on specific term put into search engine. |
Envelope Sender Address |
The email address of the sender that is used during the transport of the message from mail server to mail server, e.g. to return the message to the sender in the case of a delivery failure. It is not visible to the recipient. |
ESP |
A vendor that sells email marketing services. |
Event Triggered Messaging |
Pre-designed emails that are automatically sent when the subscriber performs a certain task. |
Ezine |
An email newsletter. Short for Electronic Magazine. |
